10 Rules for Creating Content as an Entrepreneur

Today Patrick is going to break content down in a way that maybe you haven’t heard before. One why you ought to create content and two the types of content to create the audience, the platform, and last but not least, 10 rules for creating content.

Why Create Content?

One of these is probably going to describe you, so let’s go through it.

InfluenceYou want more influence, you want to influence amongst your family, amongst your community, amongst your people. You do business with your peers.

SEO PurposesBefore Patrick started creating content on Valuetainment, he used to just create content on his company’s website to give it better SEO. An article would be shared then he would get a lead on somebody about wanting to do business. That’s another reason to create content. You have a website, you create content that gets shared. People say, wow, who is this guy? Who is this gal? They read up on you and they follow you on twitter. Follow you on Instagram, see the pictures, your post. They send you a message asking to get on a call together. That happens all the time.

Targeting KeywordsYou have a certain set of keywords that have to do with your business on a daily basis. Real estate, finance, pharmaceutical, doctor, soccer mom, parenting, whatever it is. Those are the keywords you’re specifically looking for. You want to target them.

PositioningYou want to be seen as an expert in your industry. You want to have influence. You want to have a voice. You want to have credibility. Your purpose to create content is maybe purely positioning within your own industry.

FameMaybe you want to be famous. It’s like, look, honestly, I want to walk into the streets, and I want people to know who I am. Cool. At least you’re being honest about it. You want fame.

MoneyYou create content and you start having some influence, when all of a sudden, you’re getting sponsorships. You know, we got a call from Amazon, Amazon wants to do sponsorship. You get paid by advertisers to collaborate on content. This may be a route that you want to go yourself.

SelfishMaybe you just want to have fun, so you create content. You want the audience to see the fun side of yourself. “This is who I am, and I don’t care whether you like it or not.” This is kind of what Patrick does. He likes creating content. Creating content can bring you closer to people in your life that you don’t regularly interact with because they see you in content weekly. Selfish reasons to create content are valid ones.

LegacyYou might be creating content so you can look back and see your whole life from beginning to end. You might be doing it so that when you are not around your kids have something to remember you by. They can see you at every stage of your life including before they were born. Content can create that legacy by documenting your growth and change over time.

ImpactYou want to make an impact around the world and the fastest and easiest way to do that is by creating content. Putting your voice out there is going to have an immediate impact on your immediate contacts and the goal is for them to spread it out to everyone they know.

TherapyThere are people that after creating content and they say, “I’m a veteran. I got out, I’m not going to lie to you and tell you everything was good. I was suffering from PTSD from what I witnessed in Afghanistan. I started drinking. I decided to share my pain with you because this is therapeutic for me.” And then suddenly, 80 other veterans respond, “Me too.” Then there’s a community that grows out of that therapeutic experience.

InternalSay you had a family reunion and you put a video together. You created a channel for the Johnson reunion and that channel creates content that’s only for the Johnson family and all the videos are unlisted. It’s only for the family to watch and you share with the family. Or you’re running a business and you have people that are at other offices and you’re trying to get a unified message to everybody no matter where they are. Creating content in this way helps you increase the value of your company, your family, your relationship, your friends.

Types of Content To Create

Now, if you’re connecting with one of these reasons, your next question is going to be, “Now what do I do?” Let’s talk about the types of content for you can create.

Remember TAP: Type, Audience, Platform.

Types

Trending News

Business/Money

Politics

Education

Philosophy

Entertain comedy, humor

Technology

Product review

Family

How To

Audience

Niche/ industry

It’s only real estate. It’s financial, it’s sports, etc. Who you’re trying to reach is a small group out the of the possible viewing audience. You are not trying for everybody the way the networks like CBS is doing.

Age

I’m looking for 16 year-olds, 25 year-olds, 40 year-olds, married with kids, 55 year-olds getting closer to retirement, whatever it is, age. It matters how old your audience is because people at various stages of life relate to content completely differently than people at another stage.

Demographic

You might be looking for women, men, single, married, divorced, widowed, a wife of a veteran who is serving in the military and she’s by herself for 18 months while he’s on tour. Be specific when targeting the demographic that you want to touch.

Views

Maybe they shared the same views as you politically, spiritually, philosophically. Understand their viewpoints on topics and issues so you know how they are going to relate and react to your content.

Interest

Much like views, you must understand your audience’s interests. If you create a financial channel and you have in interest in Cryptocurrency, you better have a deep knowledge and understanding of that interest. Your audience is expecting you to take your shared interest and elevate your voice to an expert in the field.

Area/ Country

Location matters because of so many factors. If you are in the real estate game for LA county, know what is happening in the county and the state of California. If you are trying to talk about US politics don’t go off on some side tangent about India-Pakistan relations without framing it in the context of the US.

Language

There’s a channel called Valuetainment in Russia. It’s videos we create that are specifically for Russia. They take our videos and translate the whole thing. If you were to go watch my interview with Michael Francis on the other channel in Russian, it’s an hour and seven minutes all in Russia. I think the Valuetainment in Russia channel has like 40,000 subscribers as of today. The language that you present your content in will only reach a certain audience that understands that language.

Platform

Different audiences flock to different platforms, so your platform choice matters. If you got a face and you’re looking incredibly good, you gotta use it. If you got a voice and you’re a good communicator, you gotta use it. If you’re a great writer, you got to use it.

If you great at writing you want to try starting a blog or using Linkedin to reach a business-minded audience.

If you take great photos or you are trying to gain attention through your appearance, you must be on Instagram. If you want to reach a young audience, you need to be on Instagram as well.

If you have a face for radio and a great sense of storytelling or you are a fantastic interviewer, start a podcast.

If you have a personality that just kills whether you are funny, smart, or insightful, you must put yourself out there on either YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, or Twitch. These ones are for the big personalities with fresh takes in their industry because this area is so saturated already with voices.

Rules For Creating Content

Now we’ve covered why to create content and TAP, now let’s talk about rules. And by the way, these rules are Patrick’s rules. It doesn’t mean they’re your rules. Patrick could be wrong. There’s a lot of people that or disagree with Patrick’s rules, but these are his rules, and these are some things he wants you to be thinking about.

More Content ≠ More InfluenceSome people just want to put so much content out there. When Valuetainment was coming up, we were studying other channels and thought this was the philosophy to make it. One channel had 4,000 videos on their youtube channel but only 200,000 subscribers. So, we started investigating. First video 228 views, 193 views, 673 views, then 498 views. One of the videos that 10,000 views but it was from five years ago. Ah-ha! That is the reason why they have these many subscribers. It’s not because of what they’re doing today, it’s past success they did not build on. They got a big head and started to churn videos out and didn’t care about quality. This whole strategy of just throw stuff up on a wall, you can’t be doing that

Control The NarrativeIf you don’t talk about what you believe in, what your views are, who you are as an individual, the world is going to control who you are because they’ll tell everybody who you are. Take control of your narrative and make sure every single view knows it.

Find Your One Word That Works For You & What Doesn’tGet a sheet of paper and ask people who know you very well and who are not afraid of speaking the truth, what do you think about me? What word comes to mind when you think about my personality? What do I know a lot about? What am I passionate about? Movies, business, money, finance, skateboarding, sports. Then see if that word matches your passion as well. If the word matches your passion, you go forward.

Collaborate AccordinglyWe at Valuetainment, get people asking us things like, “Well, why don’t you collaborate with this guy?” A lot of people we’ve spoken with have agreed with our thinking that maybe it’s not the time right now to collaborate. Maybe let’s try to work on a bigger project, so when it does happen it’s bigger. Some people say, I just don’t know if we have similar philosophies and beliefs points. If you get too early and you start collaborating with anybody and everybody, your viewers will see you as being part of that clique. You must know exactly what community you’re okay being connected with because once you collaborate, that’s what happens.

Don’t Prostitute Your BrandWe got so many offers from people that said, “We’ll pay you $100,000 if you say this.” And we always said no because it just didn’t make sense. We get a lot of offers from people wanting to do stuff on Valuetainment in exchange for a paid sponsorship, that we say no to because it doesn’t match what we stand for. We stay true to the audience because the audience is honest about what they want and what brands they would support. Your followers will appreciate you if you don’t prostitute your brand.

Study Your Data/ TestActually look at your numbers. How many minutes do people stay on with you when they’re reading an article? How many views did your video get? What time do most people see your content? What content do they avoid? You must look at all your data because it is a great way to test what works and doesn’t. It is also the only way to find out if you are succeeding or not.

Show Mistakes & VulnerabilityPatrick cannot tell you how many mistakes he’s made. One of the favorite videos for Valuetainers, 12 Mistakes I Made as an Entrepreneur. You can go watch it. It talks about the mistakes Patrick has made. If you only talk about everything you do right, it’s a turnoff. You got to talk about the mistakes you made because there’s no way in the world anybody makes it to the top of their game or does well at anything without having made a lot of mistakes.

Focus & Stay ConsistentIf you say you will post new content once a month, commit to once a month and stay focused. If you say once a week, do it once a week. Can you imagine if the news was supposed to report every night at 8:00? And one day they say, “Well, we were late today, 9:30 worked better for us.” You wouldn’t take them seriously. Your audience wants to see consistency with you.

Challenge Them To Question Your ViewsFor example, “Here’s what I think Lebron should be doing with the Lakers. Do you agree with me? Do not agree with me? Tell me your thoughts.” Or, “Here’s what I think needs to happen with business. What do you think about it? Put your thoughts below.” Ask for people’s thoughts on whether they agree with your views or not, because it is valuable feedback. Especially as you’re coming up and you haven’t reached that influencer status yet. It’s free feedback and it starts a dialogue. Asking and challenging your audience is a good way to get participation.

Today Vs. EvergreenIf I talk about stuff that’s relative only for today’s news, it’s going to irrelevant tomorrow, a week from now, and definitely a year from now. But if it’s content I create that is evergreen, it’s going to last a long time. Just look at all the Valuetainment videos they are for entrepreneurs and executives at every stage of development that can be applied today, tomorrow, and years down the line.

Founded in 2012 by Patrick Bet-David, our goal is to impact entrepreneurs around the world through value and entertainment. We are the #1 channel for entrepreneurs because of the best interviews, best how to videos, best case studies and because we defend capitalism and educate entrepreneurs.

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